Two Women Mark A Glowing Path in Indonesian Banking

In honor of International Women’s Day, we are handing the microphone to two women executives that mark a glowing path as the spokesperson for their respective banks throughout 2018: BRI Director Handayani and OCBC NISP President Director Parwati Surjaudaja.

These two inspiring women made it into the Top 5 Most Featured Banking Executives, according to Maverick Banking Media Performance Report 2018; a report that measures the effectiveness of communication strategy of the top 20 banks in Indonesia by monitoring news in 20 top media as well as social media, such as Twitter and Facebook.

Handayani ranked fourth as she was cited 362 times throughout 2018. Her strong presence in the media skyrocketed after she was appointed a BRI director in October 2017.

She started out great in the first quarter with 104 articles as she was quoted in various BRI news, from World Access Credit Card launch to partnership with GO-PAY. Unfortunately, her coverage went south gradually and touched the lowest point in Q4 2018 with only 74 articles.

Unlike Handayani, Parwati’s coverage trend climbed up every quarter, except in Q4, rounding up her total coverage to 327 articles in 2018. Parwati ranked fifth, right after Handayani.

Q2 2018 was the second largest contributor to Parwati’s entire coverage since she garnered 90 articles during this time, thanks to news about OCBC NISP’s Annual General Shareholders Meeting.

It was not surprising that both Handayani and Parwati saw their lowest coverage in Q4 because most banks usually conducted fewer activities in the last quarter of the year.

Parwati was clearly the main spokesperson for OCBC NISP as her coverage dominated the bank’s entire coverage in 2018 with 87%. Meanwhile, Handayani’s coverage only made up 19% of BRI’s 2018 annual coverage.

In this modern era, social media sometimes play better roles in spreading the news. Therefore, conventional media have to step up their game and share their articles on social media.

Of the 362 articles that mentioned Handayani, 154 of them were shared to Facebook and Twitter. These posts in social media gained 2,577 engagements, comprising of likes, retweets, and comments from users. Meanwhile, only 147 articles that cited Parwati were shared to social media and it gathered 1,064 engagements.

One of the things that further differentiate Handayani and Parwati was the media that shared their articles. Media that shared Handayani’s news was more varied and expansive, from @bisniscom account on Twitter to Kompas.com page on Facebook. Meanwhile, Parwati’s posts on social media were mainly shared by @KontanNews and @kontanonline accounts on Twitter.

Furthermore, marketing and promo news seemed to attract most engagements from social media users. News about BRI giving a bonus to Asian Games’ athletes and about BRI-Nike Warehouse Sales 2018, for instance, scored the highest engagements for Handayani.

As for Parwati, the only article that showed significantly high engagement was industry news about draft bill formulation on cash transaction limits.

In the end, Handayani’s and Parwati’s journey to enter the Top 5 Most Featured Banking Executives was remarkable and inspiring.

Both of them had to compete with other notable, male executives such as Mandiri President Director Kartika Wirjoatmodjo and BRI President Director Suprajarto who alternately topped the list throughout the year.

Just like Parwati said; “It’s okay to be successful. It’s okay to be the best you can be. It’s okay to realize your dream. It’s okay to be at the top. It’s not a sin to be a woman leader”.